"I know you don't know this / 'Cause you're too young / But the year to buy gold / Was nineteen eighty four..."
The "Coolest Girl on the Fifth Floor" by New York City artist, singer-songwriter Caroline Strickland is an exquisitely deceptive song, full of venom and two way mirrors, emotionally complex fueled by a pushed stoic beat and plucky electric guitar notes that ring out and shift into punchy chords as Caroline's vocal countenance with hard edges tells a story with a sharp tongue. On the surface, the emotional thrust here feels framed between a wolf or a lamb who learns to bite. It is a fierce, yet cool performance with two sides. I thought, oddly enough (or maybe not oddly) of Paranoid Android by Radiohead because it sort of pitches poison arrows in the same way but also shows reflections in the mirror.
About the song, Strickland reveals the back story:
"This is a song I wrote about my evil neighbor. We lived in an SRO building in the East Village. It was a weird little green structure built in 1920 that used to be a hospital, then a hotel, at one point an orphanage, and now it's full of tiny rooms with tiny bathrooms for people who are willing to live tiny lives for a tiny amount of money. When I would practice guitar or sing in my fifth floor room in the tiny building, my neighbor would scream at me through the thin walls Once, she sang back to me, chanting, "This isn't your personal opera house!!!" I said yes it is! The song was born.
At its core, the song is about the weird balance between tenderness and arrogance. In my arrogance, I hated her, but she was the one who finally taught me how arrogant I really am. The true thesis of the song is in the first line of the chorus: Before I kill you, I'll do anything you ask me to."
I thought of Paranoid Android because certain lines fell right back to Yorke in a similar way.
From Wikipedia:
"Yorke was frightened by a woman who became violent after someone spilled a drink on her. Yorke characterized the woman as "inhuman", and said "There was a look in this woman's eyes that I'd never seen before anywhere. ... Couldn't sleep that night because of it." The woman inspired the line "kicking squealing Gucci little piggy" in the song's second section. Yorke, referring to the line "With your opinions, which are of no consequence at all", said that "Again, that's just a joke. It's actually the other way around – it's actually my opinion that is of no consequence at all."
Strickland and Yorke in each relevant song are revealing darker truths about themselves through their own feelings about others. I suppose it has to do with projection and or maybe just about how those who really are love centered as opposed to hate centered win out in the end. Strickland wins because she is not that horrible person and Yorke wins because he is not that woman.
Strickland's vocal persona in this song just blows me away and the barbed lyrics she writes psychologically complex and constructed in such brilliant, smart ways.
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://carolinestrickland.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/carolinestrickland__/
Caroline Strickland is a singer songwriter based in New York, New York
Caroline Strickland, singer songwriter, indie rock, alt rock, folk indie, bedroom noir, New York City, guitarist, musician, darkly poetic, acerbic smart lens, "Coolest Girl on the Fifth Floor",
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://carolinestrickland.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/carolinestrickland__/
Caroline Strickland is a singer songwriter based in New York, New York
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